Guild Wars 2

Hello,

Sorry for upcoming wall of text. I already cut it down by about 1,5k characters, as originally it exceeded the character limit.

In this topic i would like to focus on the pets.

In PvE solo content they are amazing. I can’t comment on the dungeons part however, as i have only done 1 dungeon run myself.

In WvW
I feel sorry for you fellow rangers who actually run WvW. I have no idea how it would be even possible to keep your pet alive in that massive AoE.

In tPvP/sPvP
Most of the time i don’t even care that my pet is around. Sometimes having pet around even hurts me (for example 1v1 against unicorn thief. Sure, just heal x6 instead x3 with signet. No worries. He will miss 90% of hes hits, including hes disables on your evasions anyways or kill himself in caltrops).
Only times i actually use my pet are
*to get that nasty AoE fear on my wolf when i’, downed
*to slow down incoming targets so i could capture the point
*oh, and how can i forget. When i’m downed! That is the only moment when people are not running, so pets can attack.

So in combat where there is not that much AoE and movement, they work. Because is the pets damage actually bad? No. Is their damage on moving targets bad? YES!

So what to fix and how to fix?
Now if you want to build a class, who should “heavily” depend on hes AI controlled companion (let the question “Should ranger even depend on hes pet?” stay for another topic), the mechanics for the companion should be solid and reliable. That’t why i would like to see pet be first thing to get fixed instead of the weapons/number of specs (which actually can increase already through more reliable pets).

But how?
Well i do have a couple of changes in my mind. Now some of them may seem to be outrageous to some people. Keep it in mind that you can always lower other numbers like hp/dps once the AI actually becomes reliable.

1. Enable attacking and moving at the same time.
Please do not make pets stop, when they attack. Every now and then depending on pet and your build he reaches your target. That lockdown really lowers the reliability of the damage pets do.

2. Make your pet’s activatable powers instant.
Now on some cases, you may need to nerf the actual abilities, as they may come a little too strong. How ever having a long cast time on a lot of abilities make them unreliable.
Target is running, lets immobilize him with my dog! Wait, the dog runs into casting range, starts casting and receives a cancel because target is “moving away”. If i would rely on that immobilize as a defensive/offensive ability, i’dd be dead about 90% of the times. Now i just randomly throw it in every now and then, just to have 1 more ability to spam.
Make them instant, so you can actually time them and use them reliably.
Also make it the priority power for pet. Let the pet finish everything he is doing and cast the power right away (like dodge ends everything you do). Right now pet still finishes hes attack and your used ability goes into hes “queue”. Another thing that makes using pet abilities as actual part of the build not a good idea.

3. Lower the AoE damage pets receive.
I think this is one ability that rangers who actually WvW would kill for.
Give pets passive AoE damage reduction. Lets be honest, programming a reliable AI who could avoid AoE damage as good as a player can do it is not really a easy job. So how to fix the problem, where your pet dies passively in the first 3 seconds of the fight without anyone even targeting him? Reduce AoE damage it actually receives!
I know that other classes get screwed over by AoE damage as well. For example mesmers and minion necros. But on those cases AoE damage is actually meant to counter them. AoE damage however should not be a counter to a single target.
Other games have done it. First and easiest example is 90% AoE damage reduction hunters pets receive in WoW. Would not say it broke the PvP.

4. Give as a bigger control over the pet.
Like i mentioned before, sometimes having a pet beside me actually helps my opponent. There are so many situations, where i would just kill to have a chance to send my pet to the side. Why not have ground target ability, which would send your pet to that location. I guess what i’m asking is to have a “guard” slot ability on my pets toolbar. Wasting a slot for something like that is not really very optimal, specially now when pets are so unreliable.
For example i would love to
*send pet to the side when fighting unicorn thieves, so he would not just kill himself in caltrops, still would take condis from me (for example empathic bond) and not give him double the healing in “1v1”.
*send pet ahead from me just in case when target appears.

Keyword here is RELIABILITY!

I’m sorry if there are a lot of grammar mistakes (which there probably are, as my English is not that great, neither did i pay a lot of attention rereading the test).
Feel free to throw in your ideas.

Devourer and Spider pets depending if your power or condition help bypass some of your current problems.

As far as I can tell PET attacks largely mirror PvE enemies as I exploit my understanding of pet limatations on them constantly. If my observation is correct making attacks instant would change PvE game balance. Therefore I’ld recomend slightly raising the range of ranger pet attacks instead.

completely get where you are coming from.

I agree with all your points. In some pets the F2 takes a ridiculously long time to perform. Long animation, no priority…. you can’t rely on them to save your life. Not to mention they’ll stop in the middle of their tracks to cast it. Half the time in PVP the pet is just running after targets doing nothing.

For dungeons, only the bear/devourers are viable. Everything else dies in 2-3 hits.

80-90% aoe damage reduction would be fantastic for pets in all honest, hell if they are worried about structured pvp, they can make it only 30% in structured pvp. But right now it would really go along way in some of the pve dungeon fights, tired of my pet not returning to me in time or just out right ending up with ranged pets only.

I play WvWvW and my pets don’t instant die in aoe. Maybe you need a pet with more vitality. And sometimes, you have to press F3 to make your pet retreat. Just like you don’t stay in the aoe yourself, sometimes you have to take control and retreat your pet sometimes. And sometimes yes, your pet dies. Just like you see other human players dead too. Zergs especially are crazy that way.

If pets’ F2 abilities were instant cast, the rifle warriors would demand an instant cast kill shot. Other professions would want their “special” F-key avilities be instant cast too. Obviously that’s a bad idea.

Head to HoM and test which pets can hit the moving golem. Few can. Like if you use bears, they’re just targets that can’t hit kitten and are a waste, for example. Birds are the best against moving targets, do good DPS, have high vitality, and are hard to target in the zerg.

Why not try running a raven in WvWvW and use the F2 ability for high burst damage against your target that you immobilized or slowed with one of our numerous traps?

@Skolvikings

When you come back to pets dying. Yes, they die, like players die.
But can players dodge? Yes
Can players stunbreak? Yes
Can pets dodge? No
Can pets stunbreak? No
Who do you want to use your heal cooldown for? Yourself or your pet? Yes, yourself.
Does your pet have separate healing power? No.
So no dedicated healing, no dodging, no stunbreaks.
When you see huge red circle on a ground what do you do? You dodge out of it. What does you pet do? Die. Even if you call him back, he probably will be stunned/crippled/chilled/immobilized and die in that AoE before he gets out.
Because our class damage is heavily designed around pets damage (only weapon you can get away with right now is shortbow, everything else is more like a support for your pet), having such an unreliable “partner” never helps.

Now have you played other professions?

Elemental attunement are instant. Heck, you can even switch between them while in middle of casting power.
Necromancers death shroud is instant.
Guardians virtues are instant.
Thieves steal is instant.
Engineer toolkit powers are either instant or have very low cast time (0,25-0,5 sec).
Mesmers F key abilities are instant.
Warrior already has instant powers (ax and mace). Instant killshot? One is one of the highest damage powers in game (killshot) and other is simple disable/ low damage ability/ debuff. There is no reason for 2 second immobilize to be casted for 2 seconds. Make it quater or half a second. Better make duration 1,5 sec and make it instant, so it would actually be reliable.

Now i have tested out all the pets. I know how lovely eagles/hawks are, specially if you run them with 30% more damage on crits.
Have you ever tried, how long will they survive in proper tPvP match? Unless you can provide your pet permanent protection and a lot of regenation, which only a tank build can, then he will melt.

So you either go very tanky yourself to keep your pet alive, which means you don’t do any damage, or you go high damage on yourself, which means your pet is dead and does no damage.

Also having hawk around as tank ranger is pointless as well (unless you run some sPvP). It does not really help you to survive longer and lacks any disables. Not that rangers could get a spot in tPvP as tanks in current meta. We can be tanky just we don’t offer that amount of buffs to the team as other tanks do.

At the end, problem is not about pet being huge, easily targeted and taken down. Problem is that pet just dies in AoE, when thief/warrior jump in with their burst or elementalist throws in hes AoE.